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Israel Hyman, from IzzyVideo fame, and myself, found ourselves answering and asking a lot of Final Cut Pro questions on Twitter recently. I am also asking a lot of questions and feedback from followers, and found Twitter a very good tool for interaction around common interest. However there is a hidden potential in Twitter that is not being utilized - the need for Twitter Groups.
Online Forums
Online forums are a huge source of information for professional information. In the Final Cut Pro area, there are several great forums such as Creative Cow and Apple's official forums. However they all suffer from the same issues:
1. Fragmentation - there are several forums on the same topic, and one needs to post his/her question in multiple forums.
2. Some forums are not active on a daily basis.
The Twitter Advantage
Twitter has several advantages on forums for issues that require quick resolution:
1. It is almost immediate (well when Twitter is not down)...
2. Answers are short and to the point
3. One can follow experts and develop relationship with them over time.
A Possible Business Model
Such groups could provide new channels for businesses and experts. While it is not worthwhile for anyone to have a phone based helpdesk for creative applications, Twitter can be a great tool to develop strong customer relationships, by answering questions and helping the community in a less time consuming manner. It could also be an extension of forums and other online or offline activities. Think event based Twitter Groups. Think product based groups. Think political groups. Cool, isn't it?
What We Have Now is Not Enough
Today, the only option that is open to every user is to use # tag in tweets. By doing so, the adjunct word becomes a search phrase in Twitter search. Though it could create an ad-hock interaction, it doesn't create an ongoing interaction between group members, therefore doesn't help create a community. Also, the UI is not that simple to use. At SXSW, Twitter opened a channel for all related Tweets. This is what needed feature wise, but it is not possible, to my knowledge, to create such channels without support from Twitter HQ.
Friendfeed rooms are a great solution - but Friendfeed is not as used as Twitter, and we don't want group members to use another application.
What Is needed?
A possible solution could be the following:
1. A single entity that we can tweet for questions
2. The tweets sent to that entity are distributed to all the followers.
3. Answers to the tweets can be sent either by moderator or by group members
4. Every group member can tweet the entity, or the person who asked the question directly, but the answer should be sent to all group members.
5. All tweets should be archived for future reference
What's Next
Well, if you know about a possible solution - please leave a comment, email me or contact me via Twitter. And if Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey or any of their employees are reading this (could you try harder to get into their Google Alerts than that?), we would love to learn more about your plans in this area...
7 Comments
Give me a break. Twitter sucks. You can’t really work with it for development or brainstorming. Any IM makes it better than twitter.
twitter is for small chats.
Adi, thanks for your comment.
IM is great for one on one communication. Twitter is stronger when you communicate with a large group of people.
I currently have a nice group of people following me, and I am following almost the same amount. If you are following and followed by the right group of people, you can communicate and initiate discussion with them. And, if they are knowledgeable, they can help you solve problems – and you can help them do the same.
I don’t think that twitter is good for development – but it is good as a way to get feedback, and START a conversation that can be continued elsewhere.
come to think of it – there are several forums that their traffic is lower now due to the fact that their users are now communicating via twitter to solve their technical issues.
FriendFeed integrates with Twitter to allow discussions yet have the results go out via Twitter as well!
At the time I’m writing this, I have a little over 1,000 people following me on Twitter. That’s a HUGE resource of knowledge!
It’s even better when you consider that many of them are video professionals with more knowledge and experience than I have.
I also have other followers who are just getting into video and have many questions. Doesn’t it make sense that they should be able to talk with each other?
I’m really hoping that we discover a dead simple way for people to get in on the conversation.
Thanks for the great post!
Harold – I suggested FriendFeed as they have rooms as well so you can create a group, but FF is not as used as Twitter.
Izzy – thanks – and yep, I hope that someone will solve this issue. I found a piece of code that does that as a PHP script – if someone could host it we can have a patch for now
Kfir, I can host it. email me that piece of code and some info.
Seems like the friend feed groups is a good option for now – you have the ability to post or not post directly to twitter – Sounds like twitter is testing group functions in Japan right now http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/04/twitter-launches-groups-in-japan/
I agree that being able to group topics will only make twitter better.